Removing Vocals on Songs

[tecs187]

Does anyone know a way to remove vocals from a song on a Mac. I've tried on Audacity where you split the track into two, invert the bottom one, and then switch both to "Mono" but that doesn't seem to help that much, just a little. Is there a better way?

[kozikowski]

<<<Is there a better way?>>>

Probably not. Audacity has a tool called "Center Pan Removal" that does all those steps in one shot. However chances for success are very low.

There's a lot of reasons to fail. The show needs to be in Stereo and not Mono. It has to not be an MP3 or other highly compressed format. The singer has to be in the dead center and not have stereo effects added.

So that pretty much peels off most songs you're likely to get from the internet. If you want to party with a song you got on Music CD or in iTunes Plus, then there's hope.

And...

All the instruments in the middle like bass and drums, go too.
Generally, the resulting voiceless song is in mono, not stereo.

Voice Removal or Isolation
--Center Pan Remover (Voice Remover--Search the page for "Center Pan Remover")
http://audacityteam.org/download/nyquistplugins
--Voice Trap
http://www.cloneensemble.com/vt_main.htm
--Extra Boy
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1651.html
--Kn0ck0ut
http://www.freewebs.com/st3pan0va/

[zfr]

I did the center pan removal and got most of the vocals out. A trace of them remain, but that's totally fine. Are there any ways that you recommend to get the bass and drums back in? The bass, drums, sax and vocals must have all been in the "center" of the song, and I know it'd be nigh impossible to get them all back in without more vocals.

I could always get the drum and bass from the Karaoke track and bring it up to tempo, but that wouldn't bring the sax line back.

[steve]

In Audacity 1.3.12 you can limit the frequency range that Vocal Remover acts on. Vocals tend to be most prominent in approximately the 200 Hz to 5000 Hz range. Vocals and saxophone largely cover a similar frequency range, so you're unlikely to be able to remove one without also removing the other.